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Leaders of Colombia’s largest rebel army, the FARC, penned an open letter to President Juan Manuel Santos Monday urging him to publicly acknowledge the crisis of fatal violence targeting rural and social leaders in the country that they dubbed a “new genocide.”
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“The situation is very dramatic and worrying,” wrote the FARC. “More than 200 deaths so far this year with a total blanket of impunity. A new genocide is in motion against social and campesino leaders.”
The damning letter comes after yet another campesino leader, Erley Monroy Fierro, was gunned down Friday, and just one day before Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, also known as Timoleon Jimenez or Timochenko, are expected to sign the updated peace deal on Tuesday.
In the letter, the FARC detailed a slew of attacks in the past week threatening the safety of labor and campesino leaders with systematic violence, including three murders and two assassination attempts in the span of just 48 hours.
“Mr. President, it’s public knowledge that those behind these targeted and political assassinations are the same ones that have reaped money, power and privileges thanks to the fratricidal war that has bled the country for more than 52 years,” the letter continued. “They are the same ones for whom there will be no peace agreement that satisfies them, however good it may be, because what they want is for the war to continue (and) to continue increasing privileges and power.”
The wave of attacks against rural leaders, trade unionists and peace activists chillingly recalls the history of the violent extermination of the left-wing political party Patriotic Union beginning in the 1980s. Patriotic Union, founded by members of the FARC and the Colombian Communist Party, suffered what has been called a political genocide as two presidential candidates, dozens of lawmakers, and thousands of supporters were assassinated in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In September, Santos apologized for the Colombian state’s role — together with paramilitaries — in the systematic murder of up to 6,500 members of the Patriotic Union.
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Colombia's Patriotic Union: A Victim of Political Genocide
Now, the Marcha Patriotica, a political movement uniting some 2,000 social organizations, reports that more than 120 of its activists have been killed since it was founded four years ago.
Social movements and left-wing political leaders have raised alarm in recent days that a new political genocide is already emerging, a somber sign for the country’s budding new era of peace set in motion by the historic end-of-conflict agreement between the FARC and the government. Social organizations have urged authorities to implement the peace accords as soon as possible as a means of reducing violence and putting the country on a path toward building stable and lasting peace.
“If you are committed to peace in Colombia,” the FARC wrote to Santos, “act accordingly by putting an end to this extermination of innocent people — whose sin appears to be critical thinking and a new vision for the country — (and) implementing the agreement on security guarantees now.”
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